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German media is questioning how much President Obama knows about the US spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel. One magazine said the USA's National Security Agency (NSA) started tapping Ms Merkel's mobile phone in 2002, under the George W. Bush administration. It says Obama knew that the tap was there in 2010, before his visit to Berlin to tell Germans of the warm friendship between their two countries. A newspaper reported that Ms Merkel's SMS messages and phone calls went straight to the White House. The US Embassy in Berlin was the base for the spying.

The spying began when former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was in power. America was suspicious of his refusal to support the Iraq War. Obama told Ms Merkel last week that he knew nothing about the bugging. However, an NSA official said Mr Obama ordered the programme to be escalated. The NSA warned of "grave damage for relations" if its spying programme was discovered. Ms Merkel is shocked that the USA could do the sort of spying she thought was from the Cold War. This happened in the former East Germany, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism.